The Boy in the Library
by Funky In Fishnet
Summary: After an argument with the Doctor, Rose finds herself led to the TARDIS library and meets someone unexpected there who's hiding from the Doctor.


_**Disclaimer**: The BBC owns all characters etc of connected to Doctor Who. I wish I owned the TARDIS._

_**Author Notes**: This is set soon after the 9th Doctor episode 'The Long Game' before' The Empty Child'. The title is inspired by the Series 2 title 'The Girl in the Fireplace.' _

**THE BOY IN THE LIBRARY**

"Don't treat me like I'm crazy!"

"I can't help that, can I? I've told you, you're wrong and you're seeing things."

"I know what I saw."

"What you **thought** you saw."

Rose sighed, crossing her arms. After hours of talking, it felt like they were going round in frustrating circles. God, would he ever admit he could be wrong? Just once? The he in question, the Doctor, was lying under the central console, tweaking or fiddling or doing whatever it was he did when he was supposed to be fixing the TARDIS and remaining stubbornly sure he was right.

"Look, could it be a hologram?" she tried a different tact. "Do you have them here on the TARDIS?"

There was an utterly silence pause, even the sonic screwdriver stopped buzzing, for a few seconds. Then he began working again, leaving Rose to doubt if there'd ever been a pause at all. She ducked a bit, trying to catch sight of the Doctor's face but all she saw was his blank profile.

"None that would be running about the corridors giving you a fright," he replied at last. "I told you, you're seeing things."

"I am not and it didn't 'give me a fright'!" retorted Rose. "It just freaked me out a bit, that's all. Listen to me, Doctor. I may be a stupid ape but I know if something's real or not and what I saw was real."

"Well then how come I know, after 900 odd years on **my** ship, that there's nothing onboard fitting the description you've given of a 'weird shimmery thing'?" the Doctor made it sound so trivial and stupid that Rose wanted to slap him. Not for the first time either. "Did you eat any of those buzzonberries I told you not to touch on that freighter we hitched a ride on?"

"No, Doctor," replied Rose in a long-suffering tone of voice. "I haven't eaten anything that'll give me hallucinations. I do listen y'know"

"Then, as I've been saying from the beginning of this fun but pointless conversation, you've been seeing things!" the last part came out loud as though he was repeating it to a child.

That did it. Rose almost kicked the leg nearest to her but settled for storming off to the doorway into the TARDIS interior. Anywhere where she could cool off away from him and his stupid arrogance.

"You can be right bastard sometimes, Doctor. Has anyone ever told you that?" she fumed.

"Frequently actually," the nonchalant reply came. "And I've been called worse. You apes don't like being wrong, do you?"

Unable to form any suitable words, Rose turned on her heel and stomped off down the corridor, hoping she'd work off some of her anger. God, he was impossible sometimes! She'd gone to him with a simple question and he'd used it as opportunity to belittle her race, again. She knew she hadn't been seeing things. At first she thought she had been, but now she was sure she wasn't. Just like she'd told him, she'd been seeing something gold and sparkly, like a mist or a ghost or something, dashing through the corridors and disappearing quickly. It was beginning to make her jumpy coz she kept expecting to see it now. Was it some space virus? Or an alien being slipping aboard for some reason? Maybe to take the TARDIS or the Doctor? Rose shivered at that.

She'd thought it might be a ghost so she'd asked the Doctor. That had been her mistake. Apparently nothing even vaguely evil could manifest itself onboard the TARDIS, well most things the Doctor had conceded. But he did believe in ghosts, that was something. He'd told her, with a haunted look in his eyes, that there were all kinds of ghosts. He still maintained though that Rose was seeing things and the stress and strain of time travel or lack of sleep or something was affecting her.

But she'd known what she'd seen. Something gold, sparkly, shimmery and it was onboard the TARDIS. Maybe it something only humans could see? Before she could wonder further, a trail of gold sparkles streaked past her. Rose paused for a second. Had she seen that? Then she sighed, the Doctor was causing her to question what she saw with her own eyes now! That was it, she was going to prove that she wasn't crazy and that she had seen something!

"So there's no ghosts aboard," she muttered. "We'll see."

She sprinted after the sparkles, catching sight of them as they disappeared through a closed door. It was one she hadn't opened yet; old and wooden with a curved top. It looked very out of place in the neat modern corridors. Rose shook her head and with a deep breath, opened the door. Inside she was immediately engulfed by a warm bright light that stung her eyes. But she pressed forward, shading her eyes with her hand and found herself surrounded by….. books?

They were literally everywhere; crowding never-ending shelves, spread over tables, piled up crookedly on the floor. It was almost like a maze. Rose gazed around in awe, the Doctor hadn't told her about this! Mind you, he hadn't told her about the swimming pool or the video arcade either but she'd still found them both eventually. The big git kept hiding things from her, thinking they weren't important for her to know.

As she gazed at the amazingly un-dusty books (books were nearly always dusty in her imagined picture of old libraries and this place had be centuries old considering the Doctor's age), she found herself distracted from the now absent gold sparkles. The place was just so big, how many books were there?

"Well this'll kill a few hours," she commented, touching a hand to the nearest shelf.

She trawled down it, finding books in languages she didn't recognise, scientific theory texts, mechanic instructions books. She couldn't suppress a laugh when she found a well-thumbed copy of HG Well's _The Time Machine_.

"Research, Doctor?" she murmured with a grin, sitting down on the nearest chair. "Might even learn something useful."

Then she heard a tinkling noise that couldn't be part of the TARDIS. The TARDIS did alarms, not delicate tinkles. Slowly she looked around confused. Then the noise came again. It was stronger this time, it almost sounded like a child's laugh.

"Hello?" she called uncertainly and feeling slightly stupid. "Who's there?"

The sound came again and something looking like a gold sparkling mist shot out from a nearby shelf. Rose was on her feet immediately, ready to run after it if it started going somewhere out of her vision line. Then the thing brushed past her fingers and Rose was startled to detect a feeling of warm friendliness and reassurance. The mist was talking to her? Getting inside her head like the TARDIS did. The feeling increased as the cloud whirled rapidly around her. Rose batted it away, annoyed and apprehensive.

"Get off me! Alright, I get it, you're friendly, whatever you are," Rose sighed ruefully. "I cannot believe I'm talking to a laughing cloud!" she glared at it suddenly. "Are you what I've been seeing?"

There was an answering tinkle and the sparkles dived to the table beside Rose. They settled and glittered on the books and other paraphernalia spread over it like a late night study session. Rose picked up an open notebook, looking at the figures in careful handwriting.

"Algebra, equations. This is really complex stuff," she commented. "The Doctor's work?"

Laughter sounded clearly as the sparkles rose from the table and gathered in the empty chair. They fizzed so violently that Rose took several hasty steps backwards and wondered if they really were as harmless as they claimed to be. Then there was a soft golden glow.

Suddenly a boy was sat in the chair.

"Hello, Rose Tyler," he said with a smile as though he knew her.

For a few stunned seconds, Rose found her mouth didn't work. A boy just appeared from thin air. He looked human, maybe fifteen, but his whole body was slightly translucent. Rose pulled her phone from her pocket with trembling fingers; the Doctor needed to know about this. For all she knew, the boy could be some deadly alien thing who'd managed to worm his way onto the TARDIS. And this would prove once for all that she had not been seeing things and that the Doctor had been wrong! But before she could hit speed dial, the boy raised a hand and sparkles pulled the phone from her.

"Give that back, it's not yours!" Rose exclaimed, anger finally overriding her numb fear. "I don't know who you are or how you got on the TARDIS but…."

"I've been on the TARDIS longer than you," the boy interrupted. "I was the Doctor's friend. What's left of me still is."

Startled into silence, Rose looked closely and saw hollow sad eyes in a face that looked young but wasn't.

"What's left of you….." she trailed off as a sick feeling pooled in her stomach at his words. "You're….you're a ghost?"

"Is that so hard to believe?"

Rose slumped back against the wall. The boy in front of her was dead. God, he was so young!

"You're the one I've been seeing in the corridors!" she blurted out as the realisation struck her. "The Doctor told me ghosts couldn't get on here."

"He told you nothing evil couldn't get inside the TARDIS and he was exaggerating, as always. Plenty of evil has gotten onto this ship before and he knows all about that. But I'm good, was good. The Doctor hasn't seen me because I've hidden from him. This…." The boy gestured to his body. "Would upset him. Once I got onboard, the TARDIS wanted me to stay here."

"Got on board?"

"The TARDIS is where I wanted to be. There wasn't anywhere else left for me."

"You said the Doctor doesn't want to see you – you could be a virus or some alien I don't know about sent to destroy the TARDIS!"

"You really think that?" the boy shook his head incredulously. "You Earthlings always jump to the hysterical conclusions. Tegan was just the same."

"So you are an alien!" Rose strode back towards the door. "That's it, I'm getting the Doctor."

"No! Rose, listen to me. If the Doctor sees me, he'll get upset, angry. You know how guilty he feels about the past. It would hurt him to see me," the boy pleaded. "I'll prove to you I'm not evil."

Rose stopped and turned back expectantly, her hand resting on the door handle.

"I'm connected to the TARDIS. I can tell you things that only you'd know. The TARDIS wouldn't let me stay if I was evil or going to hurt you or the Doctor and it wouldn't give me access to that information."

"Alright then, tell me something," challenged Rose.

"Your first night here. When you finally came out of your room, you went to the TARDIS kitchen. Well the TARDIS let you find it. You were making yourself some tea and you smashed a mug on the floor by accident. You put the pieces in the bin and you didn't tell the Doctor."

Rose's eyes widened and she took some steps back towards the boy.

"I never told anyone about that," she murmured. "No one. There's no way you could know that."

"Unless the TARDIS told me, the only one who'd know," the boy replied smugly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "You can have your phone back now."

The sparkles shot the phone towards Rose and she quickly snatched it out of the air. The boy looked at her with a smirk, challenging her to hit speed dial. Rose glared back with narrowed eyes. There was something smug and irritating about him but he was right about the TARDIS, she wouldn't let anything harmful to the Doctor stay here. Travelling with the Doctor had taught Rose to trust her instincts when she had reason to. She tucked her phone into her jeans pocket and walked closer.

"Alright, so I believe you. You brought me here. What do you want?" she asked, arms crossed.

"I'm dead, Rose Tyler," he stated. "I didn't die in the TARDIS but I spent a lot of my life here."

"Why didn't you go back to….wherever it is you're from?"

"I told you, there's nothing left for me there," the boy paused. "The TARDIS became my home and the people I travelled with were my family. All the Doctor's companions had their best memories here, you know how exciting and dangerous it can be travelling with the Doctor. He remembers us all and he still thinks about his companions."

"The rooms," murmured Rose distractedly. "He's kept their rooms the same."

On her exploration of the TARDIS, Rose had come upon a lot of different rooms which obviously hadn't been the Doctor's but had been lived in. She'd found one with beautiful long dresses in the wardrobe and old-fashioned furnishings, one with crude wooden carvings, blankets for a bed and lethal-looking knives and one with a smoky stench, posters on the walls and endless clutter.

"You won't find my room. Turlough used it when he joined the Doctor," grumbled the boy. "I think Tegan wanted to try and forget about what happened to me."

"Tegan….was she someone you an' the Doctor travelled with?"

"Yes. She was human like you, Australian and bad tempered," Adric smiled as he spoke about her. "We argued a lot. I suppose she was sort of like a sister to me."

For a few moments the boy seemed to be staring far into the distance and Rose felt awkward. What did you say to a dead person? Then the boy refocused his attention on her.

"He needs you, Rose Tyler. He needed all of us. I know he'll hardly ever tell you and pretend he doesn't care but he does need you to stay with him. You can't leave him."

"I wasn't planning to," retorted Rose stung.

"None of us ever planned to leave but we all did," replied the boy, one hand playing with the star-shaped badge pinned to his top. "Opportunities happened and we got pulled away."

As he finished speaking, the boy's image began to flicker and for split seconds other people seemed to be sat there instead. Rose couldn't make out who they all were but she got the distinct impression they were all grieving. Then there was just the boy, staring up at her and his hands continually playing with the star badge. A shiver ran through her.

"Who are you?" she asked quietly. "What planet do you come from?"

The boy looked surprised then dropped his hand to his lap.

"I was Adric from a planet called Alzarious. That's where the Doctor and Romana met me. It was in E-Space, a sort of pocket dimension," the boy said at last matter-of-factly. "It's a place you humans haven't been to yet."

"Who's Romana?" Rose frowned, not recognising the name.

"A Time Lord, a friend of the Doctor's. I think she became Lady President of Gallifrey later on," Adric's expression darkened as he frowned. "She's probably dead now though," after a beat of silence he brightened at a fresh memory. "She could drive the TARDIS better than he could."

"He does do bumpy landings," agreed Rose with a laugh. She felt surprisingly comfortable with this stranger, this ghost child who was part of the TARDIS. It was good to talk to someone who'd had similar experiences to her. "What's your planet like?" she didn't quite stifle a giggle. "And do you all wear yellow pyjamas?"

"These are not pyjamas!" retorted Adric indignantly. "These are the clothes of my people!"

"Well, they look like pyjamas to me."

They really did – loose trousers and a long sleeved top in butter yellow and red. Combined with mischievous dark eyes set in a childishly round face and a mop of dark hair, Adric appeared younger than he probably was. He seemed so alive. Could he really be dead? Rose's eyes fell to the star-shaped badge pinned to his top pocket.

"What's that?" she pointed to it.

"Badge for Mathematical Excellence," Adric was smug. "For equations you won't understand. Like the ones in my notebook you're holding," he shook his head in amusement when she offered it to him. "It's no good to me now. I'm dead, aren't I?"

"Why do you keep playing with the badge?"

"It's important to me, that's why. It reminds me I'm not who I was," he pulled the star free from the fabric. "Before I died, the Doctor used it to keep the TARDIS, Tegan and Nyssa safe. It was crushed to pieces. He keeps it with him in his pocket."

Rose silently wondered how much more guilt the Doctor carried that he wouldn't share with her. God, what must it have been like when this young boy was suddenly taken from him? And the sharp fragments of the badge always there when he reached for his sonic screwdriver. Always there to remind him of the close friend he hadn't been able to save. An uncomfortable question entered Rose's mind.

"How many of the Doctor's companions have died?" she asked slowly.

"Enough," was Adric's evasive answer. "The Doctor remembers them all, everyday."

All that guilt weighing him down, of the friends he'd failed. People he'd cared about.

"What about you?" Rose was hesitant but she ploughed on unable to quell her morbid curiosity. "How did you die?" then quieter. "What happened?"

There was silence as Adric pinned the badge back onto his pocket then rested his chin on his steppled fingers.

"It feels like I wasn't really there," he mused. "Like it was a dream. But I remember the pain and it's impossible to feel pain in dreams. A spaceship was about to crash into the Earth, undoing its history. The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan had been forced to take the TARDIS far out into space and were imprisoned there by a hostile force. I was left on the ship with the crew. The navigational drive of the spaceship was locked by logic puzzles and I managed to solve two of them. As I was about to leave in the escape pod, I realised I could solve the last one so I stayed on the ship. I was still on it when it crashed into the Earth."

Rose felt chilled as she looked at the boy's calm expression. She tried hard not to think about what must have happened to his body. How was he so detached? So calm about something so horrific? She swallowed back bilge and thought through what he had told her. One thing leapt out at her.

"But the Earth wasn't destroyed. I mean, I'm alive, I exist," she pointed out.

"I know, all I ended up killing was the dinosaurs," smiled Adric ruefully. "Solving part of the puzzles sent the ship back in time. I never knew if I got that last logic puzzle right."

Rose settled herself on the floor as Adric pulled something made of rope and beads out of his pocket. It kind of looked like rosary beads to Rose but somehow it wasn't. Rose squinted up at him, noticing how he was tinged with golden light. There was so much she wanted to ask him.

"What's death like?" she wondered aloud.

"Lonely," replied Adric shortly. "That's why I came back. I spent so much time here researching something with Nyssa or working on equations."

"I didn't know this place even existed til today. The Doctor never mentioned it."

"He still comes here when you're asleep. He never sees me though."

Rose scooted closer, completely unafraid now. The Doctor kept so much of his past a secret that learning anything new was always exciting.

"Why won't you let the Doctor see you?" she asked carefully.

"He thinks everything's his fault, he's always had this ridiculous guilt complex," Adric shook his head. "He blames himself for my death, he thinks there was something else he could have done. I chose to stay on that ship though, to try and save your backward planet and get that puzzle right," Adric stated vehemently. "It was my decision and I thought I was doing the right thing."

"You sound like him," offered Rose after a terse pause, wishing she could put a hand on his arm to comfort him.

"I am like him," Adric smiled suddenly. "Or so the TARDIS tells me. Something about us both being too clever for our own good."

"Sounds about right," replied Rose, waving the notebook.

"Your human mind is probably too simple to understand it."

"Now you do sound like the Doctor."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, having reached a strange unexpected understanding bond. Suddenly Rose found herself full of questions for this person who'd had such similar experiences to her and lived in this weird endless box. But before she could Adric had fixed his intense gaze on her.

"You don't think he understands us and you're right, he doesn't. But we're important to him, you and me. I know it doesn't feel that way all the time but it is true. Do you know that ever since he began travelling he's hardly ever travelled alone? He's always had someone with him, all kinds of people, all kinds of species."

Rose shrugged, a little unnerved by how his image kept flickering. It reminded her how unreal he actually was, how he was part of the machinery and how he wasn't alive anymore. Adric smiled and Rose's heart ached as she suddenly realised how young he was or had once been.

"Don't look so sad for me! I'm here, in the TARDIS. I learnt a lot here. It barely feels like I've left, only the Doctor…..he's different to how I remember him."

"Different how?"

"You wouldn't have recognised my Doctor," Adric paused as though considering something heavy. "He had blonde hair and wore cricket whites."

Rose tried to picture it and burst out laughing. Adric smiled patiently with the air of someone indulging a child.

"I'm sorry," Rose said once she'd caught her breath. "That's just impossible to imagine. Not him, with his leather jacket and Northern accent."

"People change, even Time Lords," replied Adric with a quirk of his lips. "Especially Time Lords. You'll understand eventually."

He looked like he knew a lot more than he was telling Rose decided. But he was part of the TARDIS, which must mean he was part of the databanks. Did that make him memory or machine or both? Rose wondered where his memories stopped and the TARDIS began.

"He doesn't talk about the other companions, does he? The ones who came before," stated Adric almost casually. "He used to before the guilt weighed on him so heavily. You're different to the others. Well almost all the others. There was someone else."

A strange green feeling twisted in Rose's gut and she found herself desperate to know what Adric was talking about. She got to her feet and settled down beside him on the table.

"What do you mean?" she asked. "I'm different?"

"He travelled alone for some time, eaten away by guilt. He lost so many friends in the war, so many people he cared about so he decided to try and stop caring. Stupid idea really. He wouldn't be the Doctor if he did that. But he thought he could," Adric sighed. "He still saved lives, planets, races but he didn't travel with anyone and he never visited the old friends he'd kept safe. Then he dropped onto Earth to stop the Nestene and he met you."

That dark cellar in Henrik's. Plastic dummies swaggering towards her til she was backed up against a wall and she was suddenly sure this was it and that it was a bizarre way to go. Then a warm hand in her's, a manic grin and they were running. It made her smile just thinking about it

"What did I do?" she managed at last.

"You gave him life," Adric answered simply. "You helped him remember why he left Gallifrey in the first place. To help people, get involved in other lives and stop evil when he could while protecting Time. You showed him what he'd become."

"The Dalek," Rose realised, remembering the place they'd only recently left.

"You stood up to him and you made him remember what's important. What he'd always celebrated and tried to protect before the War," Adric smiled again. "You are the woman he loves."

The words the Dalek had said and the Doctor hadn't denied. Rose had decided not to bring it up with him afterwards but it was still there between them. It was something strange and beautiful and stronger than whatever she'd had with anyone else but love? That seemed too permanent, too big, too normal for the Doctor. But she knew she wouldn't rather be with anyone else.

"I don't know about that," she said lightly.

"And you think I do?" snorted Adric. "Maths makes sense but all these emotions don't. You can't find a pattern or an equation to get an answer. The TARDIS tells me what she knows. He cares deeply for you, Rose Tyler. He'd give up his life for you."

"I don't want him to do that!" Rose protested but Adric carried on.

"He loves you, for the first time for a long time he feels love. You have given him so much and you have no idea of how you've changed him. He needs you."

"Then why does he treat me like I'm a child? A stupid ape?" muttered Rose bitterly, countless incidents circling in her mind.

"He always shuts us out, to try and stop caring even though he can't. That's why he left Gallifrey, because he cared. That's why he fought in the War. That's why he fights now. You remind him of that," Adric's smile twisted. "Having people travel with him keeps him anchored to his fight. But the War tore that from him. He tried not to love anyone again. There was someone before the War."

There it was again, that feeling. Like possessiveness or something. Was this what Mickey felt every time he had to say goodbye to her? Then her mind caught up with Adric's words. The Doctor had loved before? Properly loved?

"Who was it?" she asked, morbidly eager.

"A human female like you. She was a doctor, a proper medical one," Adric replied. "She helped him recover from a difficult time and in that one night they spent together, the Doctor felt love for her."

"She must have been special," muttered Rose.

What sort of woman had that sort of effect on the Doctor? He always acted like humans were inferior to every other species, especially his. This woman must have been something really special to make the Doctor feel that way. It wasn't making her feel any better.

"So what happened?"

"She didn't want to travel with him. She had a life here, a calling and the Doctor couldn't stay tied to Earth again so he left without her. He never stopped thinking about her though," Adric sighed. "Until the War and everything he had to do. He didn't think he was worthy of love, he still doesn't. Now he tries to never think about her. Then he met you and he loved again."

Rose went to protest but Adric shook his head firmly.

"You're very different to her. I've seen pictures," Adric grimaced. "Comparing yourself would be a very stupid thing to do."

Rose gave a watery smile.

"Just remember you're important. You're going to go to so many strange places, meet so many people with the Doctor. He needs you with him in case he forgets again and shuts the world out. Help him live even when he becomes immature and irritating," Adric made a face. "We all got frustrated with him at one time or another."

Rose smiled, remembering the times she'd wanted to smack him for his stupid behaviour. He needed her. The Doctor needed her.

"This other human, what was her name?" she asked suddenly.

Adric began to reply when an alarm sounded loudly. Rose scrambled to her feet.

"What's going on?"

"Cloister bell," Adric looked almost nostalgic before frowning slightly. "And a mauve alert. You'll be needed in the console room."

Rose ran for the door but paused after she flung it open. Adric was glowing gold again.

"I can come find you here later, yeah?" she checked.

"I don't see why not," shrugged Adric. "Just don't tell the Doctor. Trust me when I say he won't thank you."

A second later Adric exploded into gold sparkles that dashed around the room and brushed against Rose. Then they disappeared into some ceiling piping. Rose grinned as she shut the door behind her and began running down the corridor.

"A ghost on the TARDIS," she grinned then groaned as she realised something. "And I know the Doctor's wrong but I can't tell him!"

Seconds later, she reached the console room and all thoughts of Adric were chased from her mind as she took in the lights, noise and the Doctor's excited expression.


End file.
